All posts by jwbaker

James Baker is Director of Digital Humanities at the University of Southampton. James is a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and holds degrees from the University of Southampton and latterly the University of Kent, where in 2010 he completed his doctoral research on the late-Georgian artist-engraver Isaac Cruikshank. James works at the intersection of history, cultural heritage, and digital technologies. He is currently working on a history of knowledge organisation in twentieth century Britain. In 2021, I begin a major new Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project 'Beyond Notability: Re-evaluating Women’s Work in Archaeology, History and Heritage, 1870 – 1950'. Previous externally funded research projects have focused on legacy descriptions of art objects ('Legacies of Catalogue Descriptions and Curatorial Voice: Opportunities for Digital Scholarship', Arts and Humanities Research Council), the preservation of intangible cultural heritage ('Coptic Culture Conservation Collective', British Council, and 'Heritage Repertoires for inclusive and sustainable development', British Academy), the born digital archival record ('Digital Forensics in the Historical Humanities', European Commission), and decolonial futures for museum collections ('Making African Connections: Decolonial Futures for Colonial Collections', Arts and Humanities Research Council). Prior to joining Southampton, James held positions of Senior Lecturer in Digital History and Archives at the University of Sussex and Director of the Sussex Humanities Lab, Digital Curator at the British Library, and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He is a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College, a convenor of the Institute of Historical Research Digital History seminar, a member of The Programming Historian Editorial Board and a Director of ProgHist Ltd (Company Number 12192946), and an International Advisory Board Member of British Art Studies.
DHums, History, Public talk, Teaching

Week 6: Cultural History and the Digital Humanities

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Those eagle-eyed among you may notice that this post is a few days late. However I delayed my weekly post to make mention of my guest slot this morning in Alixe Bovey‘s ‘The Monster and Medieval Culture‘, a year-long special subject course at the University of Kent. Alixe asked me to come and talk to the group after the students voted to have their work appear on a blog, as this seemed the ideal opportunity to discuss the intersection between digital scholarly communication and digital scholarship.

The talk (the presentation for which is here) dealt with an explanation – as I see it – of what makes DH, followed by some examples of how I’ve used methods derived from DH in my research. Given that the students didn’t know my subject area I limited myself to slightly crude examples, but I think I got the point across the DH driven research can provide a valuable addition to the cultural historians armory. Indeed in the discussion that followed the benefits and limitations of qualitative work came up (on which Alixe made a perceptive point that much of what I’m doing contained echoes of the Annales School –  to which I agree, I’m sure that third generation Annalists such as Ladurie would have embraced DH were it around at their pomp) and I frightened them a little by showing off the inner workings of TileMill and Gephi, but there was apparent positivity towards to potential of DH – of all the tools perhaps unsurprisingly Voyant came out as a clear favourite.

Hopefully my presence will inspire some of them to tease at the edges of DH and blog about it. The shame is that this message is only finding its way to our third year cohort (and only a fraction of them). Surely our first year students need some knowledge of DH in order to develop – as some will – into effective and creative researchers? Much as I like the idea of DH as a ‘paradiscpline‘, it also clearly needs some hooks in order to become recognised as an regular part of our existing pedagogical programmes. Perhaps, thinking of the sector wide drive for humanities degrees offering ‘added value’ and ’employability opportunities’, DH-based modules might push their way into humanities teaching portfolios through the promise of offering novel skills – not least (given the gasps the inside of TileMill and Gephi provoked) the promise of developing knowledge and experience of using and reading some code (html, css, json), skills surely of some prestige to employers whose visibility, agenda, and fortune are increasingly digitally driven.